


The City That Never Sleeps

by felpereBRanco



Series: One Shots [8]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Arrow (TV 2012) Season 1, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:34:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27199891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/felpereBRanco/pseuds/felpereBRanco
Summary: Oliver returns from the island expecting Starling to be the broken city he always remembered. Things, however, have changed.
Series: One Shots [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1858066
Kudos: 2





	The City That Never Sleeps

**Author's Note:**

> Another one shot, as is customary. I honestly wish I could turn this in a 40-100k words story, but I feel like this works better for the zing than the plot in itself. - The dark themes of the first seasons of arrow wouldn't exactly mesh too well with the idea, I imagine. Either way, I'm also busy with a new piece featuring Alex Danvers as a space pirate...
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!

Starling City never changed. Oliver knew that, it was a painful realization he came to years before he even decided to return, when he had to watch Thea slip deeper into the same mistakes he used to make from behind his grave, hidden, without being able to interact with her. Starling City never changed, and if Oliver wanted to regain his Father’s honor, his monster would have to be the one to change that, to force the city in motion, to create an imbalance in the status quo.

And, as he assumed, things were the same when he returned. Sure, his five years away affected his family, made them become people that, sometimes, he could barely recognize. (Especially Thea, he noted with pursed lips.) But the company? The Glades? It was exactly the same. The same cutthroat attitude, the same disgust for the poorer areas, the same selfishness that permeated Starling’s Royalty. No one cared about the Glades, it’s why he planned to make his base there. 

Still, Oliver couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was different, that he was missing something big that everyone was aware of. Ironically, that feeling made him truly feel like the castaway he presented as. His only warning, as it was, came with the name of Tommy Merlyn, his best friend once upon a time and also the man he almost murdered for Argus. 

“What did I tell you? Yacht sucks.” He quipped with a small chucked. Oliver put on a smile, turning so he could offer a hug. 

“Tommy Merlyn.” He stated, and Tommy echoed. “I missed you, buddy!”

“Okay, what else did you miss?” He asked later, with his mouth full while sitting at the family dinner table. “Super Bowl Winners, Giants, Steeler, Saints, Packers, Giants again, a black president, that’s new, and there’s also a new hero swinging around.” Oliver twisted his head a bit, staring with a confused smile and a startled blink. 

“You mean, like a movie?”He asked. Tommy smirked, eyes full of mirth. 

“Oh, no. She’s real, buddy. You’ll probably see her soon enough.” Oliver felt, quite put, lost, but he didn’t have time to question more before Thea interrupted them.

“What was it like there?” She asked. There was silence at the table. A quiet permeating the air as everyone watched him, unwilling to voice the question they really wanted to ask but hoping he would answer it all the same. 

What happened to you on that island?

“Cold.” He bared his teeth, answering in the only way he could think of. 

Oliver didn’t have time to pay Tommy’s words any more attention, the quick argument with his mother, his slip up with Russian, everything was just _so much,_ and by the end of it, Oliver pretty much forgot he was missing something, that is, until it slammed right into his face like the flying projectile that almost killed him. 

They were driving through the Glades in Tommy’s Mercedes, his friend watching the homeless people drift by the sidewalks with discomfort. Oliver on the other hand watched them with wariness, paying attention to every alleyway he could slip into, every dark corner an Argus agent could be hiding in, waiting to spring the ambush. 

“This city’s gone to crap. Your dad sold his factory just in time. Hey, why did you want to drive by this neighborhood anyway?”

The abandoned Queen factory stood in the corner of his window, old, rusting, _forgotten._ Oliver narrowed his eyes, already cataloging the equipment he would need there, the contacts he would have to call to set it up. 

“No reason.” He commented.

Tommy tried to break the ice again, a teasing comment aimed at a person Oliver wasn’t anymore, at the boy that died on Lian Yu. For once, Oliver couldn’t handle slipping back into his mask, into that stupid, ignorant jerk everyone expected him to be. 

“Laurel.” He answered with a tense look, avoiding Tommy’s gaze. She was the only thing he missed.

“Everyone is happy you’re alive,” Tommy spoke, disbelief clouding his tone. “You want to see the one person who isn’t?”

Oliver didn’t answer. Tommy scoffed but drove on. 

Laurel’s office was apparently located in the borders of the Glades, far enough into it that the rent would be cheap, but well into the commercial district that caused high traffic through the streets. Tommy clearly wasn’t the patient type of driver, Oliver noted quietly, watching him hit the horn after a brisk stop.

“What the hell?” He murmured. “Must’ve been an accident.” He said to himself. Oliver frowned, watching the people at the vehicle in front get out of the car, looking in shock to something happening far beyond Oliver’s gaze, before turning and running away in panic. 

Oliver frowned, warily unlocking his seatbelt, but at the sight of an explosion nearby he opened the door, all but jumping out of the car. He wasn’t going to run, his plan was the same as the standard Argus protocol: Access the situation, neutralize hostile, triage wounded. 

His plan went out of the window with the flash of a lightning strike coming from the ground and _curving_ into a lamppost nearby, a red shipping container flying through the air toward him. He didn’t even think, throwing himself backward in hopes that Tommy’s car would cause him to end up pinned instead of smashed. 

It must’ve worked, Oliver thought, he was still alive. But the sound of metal crashing didn’t come as expected and when he opened his eyes, the container still loomed over him, held in the air by the thin figure of a woman wearing a solid red onesie with a round spider-like logo in the back.

She groaned, but he could see through her muscles that somehow, the weight wasn’t exactly a problem for her. Her hands didn’t grip the container either, they laid flat on the surface of the metal as if the sides were magically glued to it. Oliver couldn’t take his eyes off her, barely able to comprehend what he was seeing. 

He ran theories in his mind, wondering if this woman somehow acquired the Mirakuru, if she was the same sort as that Constantine guy he met once, the brit with magic tricks, if this was one of Waller’s experiments, but none of it made sense. 

She threw the container aside almost carelessly, shoulders hanging loose in a gangly, almost awkward manner before turning to him. She snapped forwards, hands gripping his forearms in a surprisingly gentle grip as she helped him get back on his feet. 

“You okay?” She asked, not bothering to wait for an answer before checking his chest, his sides, his head. “Good, whew, that was close!” She looked away for a second, allowing Oliver to get an eyeful of the white spider on her chest. It wasn’t exactly an onesie, he noted. The fabric was clearly high tech, as if spandex had met kevlar and carbon nanofiber in a cloth that looked both smooth and weaved, shiny details in white that clearly offered higher protection in thin red background that allowed a good range of mobility and breathing room. Her shoes were similar to sneakers but ingrained in the fabric itself, and her gloves were also well protected, with white pieces that looked more like a gauntlet itself covering her knuckles and the end of each finger. On her chest, the symbol sat proudly and easily recognizable, eye-catching even. The lower legs of the spider curled around her waist into a small belt that didn’t fit much beyond something the size of a USB drive, and the top bend slightly to form the white patches on the shoulder. Her hair hung loose from the top of her mask, blond hair that Oliver had a feeling was dyed and he noted with surprise that the bug-like lenses covering her eyes _moved_ , almost like a camera's, they snapped shut and opened wide in cartoonish motions that made her wear her heart on her sleeves.

Oliver desperately wanted the name of the person who created that suit. 

“Oh,” she murmured after turning to him again, ignoring a helicopter flying by low on the ground, a white thin thread stuck to its side floating in the wind. “You’re Oliver Queen.” She remarked, getting a good look on his face. “Wow, that’s good.” She said, worry and relief for some reason clearly evident in her voice. The woman must’ve seen his frown, because she explained. “That you’re alive. I mean. Well, not that you were dead, _dead,_ just shipwrecked, which is good. _Not!_ I mean not good, but you’re alive. Uhh, I’m glad you’re alive.”

There was a moment of silence as they stared at each other in silence, both of them seemingly at a loss, before she snapped out of it, turning toward the helicopter with a groan and a dramatic slump of her shoulders. 

“Ugh, I gotta catch that helicopter.” She looked at him quickly with an aborted wave of a hand. “See you around. _Working on it, Lance, I got this!”_ Oliver watched her jump in the air, reaching over three floors before throwing some kind of grappling hook in one of the buildings and swinging away. He still managed to catch her last words to whoever she was talking on the radio as she left. “ _Please let me got this._ ”

Oliver stared until well after she vanished, stupefied by the sight of something so...unbelievable happening in his city, the one that, supposedly, never changed. 

“ _That_ was Spider-Woman.”Tommy appeared at his side, startling him. At his lack of an answer, Tommy clarified. “The hero I was talking about yesterday?”

“Is that… normal?” He asked hesitantly. Tommy shrugged. 

“I guess… It’s usually not as bad, but every week or so something big happens, like this. No one really dies though, she’s pretty good about getting civilians out of danger before engaging the Villain of The Week.”

“Right.” Oliver murmured with a sigh. Clearly, he would need to research more about what was happening in his city before he could suit up. 

“But hey, her suit is pretty slick, amirite?” He joked with a leery smirk, bumping elbows with Oliver. 

**Author's Note:**

> OMAKE (Because I'm a sucker for soulmate AUs)
> 
> Later, after Laurel had yelled at him, after he came back home and locked himself in his room, Oliver let out a shaky breath slowly, almost reverently, pulling his right sleeves, revealing the words in bold red circling over his arm. “You okay?” It asked, before spiraling in a mess of words that never made much sense to Oliver before, at least, not before he made it to Lian Yu.
> 
> _You okay? You’re Oliver Queen. Wow, that’s good. That you’re alive. I mean. Well, not that you were dead, dead, just shipwrecked, which is good. Not! I mean not good, but you’re alive. Uhh, I’m glad you’re alive. Ugh, I gotta catch that helicopter. See you around. Working on it, Lance, I got this! Please let me got this._
> 
> _Over her heart, in neat and justified words, it read. “Felicity Smoak? Hi, my name is Oliver Queen.”)_
> 
> One thing I wanted to mention: Her suit is similar to Ultimate Comics' Jessica Drew, but the texture of it looks similar to the PS games, where the suit looks stylish and professional-made while maintaining the classic look.


End file.
